Television comedy lifer Penny Marshall meets her match in Armisen's bookstore sensitive in Portlandia's second season.

Twin Peaks' Pacific North detective Kyle MacLachlan reprises his mayoral role in Portlandia's second season.

Carrie Brownstein ripped it up on guitar with critically acclaimed power trio Sleater-Kinney and her new indie supergroup Wild Flag. And she let her comedic hair down in IFC’s excellent hipster satire Portlandia.

So why does she still feel like a noob as Portlandia‘s second season, whose cameo-riddled fun is previewed in the gallery above, premieres Friday night?

“I feel like I came in comedy’s side door, and still feel very fraudulent in many ways,” the Portland-based Portlandia star told Wired.com by phone. “I always took music very seriously, which has helped me with my confidence and fearlessness. But to be honest, I think that half of us feel fraudulent in our lives anyway. There’s that strange disconnect of not really knowing what we’re doing sometimes, or why it matters. It’s our existential crisis.”

Like most crises, Brownstein’s existential conundrum offered unseen opportunities. When Sleater-Kinney disbanded after bashing out 2004 masterpiece The Woods, the Seattle-born musician took to writing for NPR and making online videos as Thunderant with kindred spirit (and Saturday Night Live star) Fred Armisen.

It wasn’t long before the two created Portlandia, striking a much-needed blow for the weird and wonderful in an era of increasing conformity. Brownstein and Armisen play multiple roles in the sketch-comedy series, which skewers everything from organic food-obsessed diners to feminist bookstore owners. Set in Portland, Oregon, the show gives The City of Roses a starring role.

“The city does function as a character, although not in terms of realism,” Brownstein said. “Instead of catering to the average or middle-of-the-road, Portland caters to the exemplary and the different. If you don’t have a special need, you’re not special.”

In Portlandia‘s new season, some of those special needs have to do with fans of silent expressionist horror classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and of Ronald Moore’s supermodels-in-space reboot of Battlestar Galactica, whose stars Edward James Olmos and James Callis join Moore in a geektastic cameo.

It was a postmodern spiral of sorts for Galactica newcomer Brownstein, who had become a sci-fi fangirl by the time Olmos left the Portlandia set with a rousing speech.

‘It’s interesting how fans feel that their particular ways of manifesting their affections are the correct ones.’

“It was a bit of life imitating art,” she said. “When we started shooting the skit’s first segment, I started watching [Battlestar Galactica]. So by the time Moore and the actors showed up on the set, we were crazed fans. And as Edward James Olmos was leaving, he gave this wonderful speech about Portlandia, and it was like, ‘Here he is, giving us a speech, but we’re not on the spaceship!’ When you become a fan of something, it does become more difficult to separate reality from fiction, so for us everything became more compounded. That’s a long way of saying that, yes, I am a huge BSG fan now.”

Fandom is also excellently teased in the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari sketch and others that tackle the credibility games geeks play to prove their loyalty to the pop products they just can’t leave alone. Even — perhaps especially — when they’re on the same team.

“For film and television, it’s interesting how fans feel that their particular ways of manifesting their affections are the correct ones,” Brownstein said. “It’s not just about being a fan, it’s about how you perform your fandom. That’s always been interesting to me.”

From Sleater-Kinney to Wild Flag to … Sleater-Kinney?

Fandom is, after all, what propelled Brownstein back into music with Wild Flag after Sleater-Kinney went on indefinite hiatus.

“I wrote so much about fandom and participation for NPR that I eventually realized my most fertile way of participating in music is to actually play it, at least in a way that made the most sense to me,” said Brownstein, whose gifts for both comedy and rock are readily apparent in Wild Flag’s goofy video for “Romance” (above).

The band, which consists of Sleater-Kinney’s thunderous drummer Janet Weiss, The Minders’ Rebecca Cole on keyboards and vocals, and Helium’s Mary Timony on guitar, released a self-titled debut last year; an international tour begins Jan. 27.

Brownstein’s fandom might come full circle with Sleater-Kinney, which might be ending its hiatus in the future. That is, if Brownstein, Weiss and guitarist/vocalist Corin Tucker, who guest-starred in Portlandia‘s first season, can align their disparate schedules to resuscitate one of the most powerful, relevant bands in music history.

“Corin and I are still the best of friends, and we have been talking a lot about Sleater-Kinney as something to do again,” said Brownstein.

Tucker confirmed that she and Brownstein have talked about putting the band back together, which Tucker said she “would love to do someday.”

“But I’m working on a record with my band this year, and Wild Flag is touring, and there’s a couple of other things happening too,” Tucker said in an e-mail to Wired.com. “We’ll see!”

“I’ll try to squeeze it into the one day I have free in 2012!” Brownstein laughed.